Political Science Subject Guide: Websites

Evaluate

Using websites can be tricky. Ask these questions to get a sense for whether the website is reliable:

Ask who is responsible for the information.Are they qualified to teach you? Why are they providing this information? Does someone take credit for the information by name? Can you contact them if you have questions?

Ask whether the information is objective. Does it present both sides of an issue? Is it designed to persuade you? Does anything about the information seem fishy?

Ask how current the information is. Is the site dated? Has it been updated recently enough to provide good information? Are there old or out of date links?

Websites

American Bar Association Public Resources
Provides information for the public on legal topics such as children
and the law, domestic violence, estate planning, human rights, and much
more. Also contains information about the legal system, legal
statistics, and a consumer's guide to legal help.

American Experience: The Presidents
Over 25 hours of streaming video from the PBS Presidents series
including a detailed summary page for each chief executive, an in-depth
look at the presidents in the broadcast series line-up, and includes
links to presidential sites, a detailed bibliography, collections of
primary sources, and more.

Global Legal Information Network
GLIN is a database maintained by the Library of Congress. It includes
official texts of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and other
complementary legal sources.

Internet Law Library
Provides information on the U.S. Code, laws from other nations,
international law, law schools, directories of attorneys, and much more.

Ohio County Profiles
Prepared by the Ohio Department of Development's Office of Strategic
Research this web site contains data and analysis on the Economic,
Industrial, and Demographic trends of the State of Ohio, its businesses
and its people.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Provides information about its 30 member countries and the
relationships between them. Also has information on 70 other countries
with which the organisation has active relationships. Contains useful
publications, statistics, and information about economic and social
issues.

Richard Kimber’s Political Science Resources
British site which contains links to websites dealing with political
theory, political parties around the world, journals, government
websites, constitutions, elections, and much more.

UNdataSearch
across multiple sources including official statistics produced by
countries and compiled by United Nations data system, as well as
estimates and projections. The domains covered are agriculture,
education, energy, industry, labour, national accounts, population and
tourism.

Watching America
This web site collects news and views about the United States published in other countries.

The World Bank: Countries and Regions
Provides information on the countries of the world, including an
overview, data and statistics, news and events, publications and
reports, and more.